José Sarney

3 results arranged by date

2. The vicious cycle of impunity

By Sara Rafsky

When theWorld Cup kicks off in Brazil in June, the government of President Dilma Rousseff will be celebrating the country’s emergence as a global powerhouse. The event, to be staged at sites across the country, will put the nation’s vast and diverse territory on display,unlike the Olympics, which Brazil is hosting two years later in just one city, Rio de Janeiro. While the 2012 murder of a local soccer journalist in central-western Goiânia may run counter to the official narrative of success, it reflects the disparate realities of a country as immense as Brazil, and depicts a darker side of “the beautiful game.”

3. Censorship via the courts

By John Otis

Published since 1824 in the Brazilian city Recife in northeastern Pernambuco State, Diario de Pernambuco is South America’s oldest daily newspaper still in circulation. Over its 190 years the paper butted heads with the powerful and was censored by Brazil’s military regimes. But last year Diario de Pernambuco suffered its first case of official censorship since Brazil returned to democracy in 1985.

In Latin America, A Return of Censorship

By Carlos Lauría

As the preeminent political family in the northeastern state of Maranhão for more than 40 years, the Sarneys are used to getting their way in Brazilian civic life. So when the leading national daily O Estado de S. Paulo published allegations in June 2009 that linked José Sarney, the Senate president and the nation's former leader, to nepotism and corruption, the political clan did not sit idly by. The Sarneys turned to a judge in Brasília, winning an injunction that halted O Estado from publishing any more reports about the allegations. Eighteen months later, as 2010 came to a close, the ban remained in effect despite domestic and international outcry.